Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) gearboxes have gained immense popularity in India in recent years, and its use in affordable entry-level cars is more prevalent than before. AMTs make sense given the growing traffic congestion in cities. The fuel efficiency offered by an AMT is also more than what is offered by a manual gear box and are also fairly inexpensive to maintain as compared to advanced automatic gearbox technologies. With the new redi-GO AMT, Datsun India intends to ensure customers avail these advantages and offer a value proposition in a market, where this technology is being fast lapped up.
AMTs are essentially a pseudo automatic transmission and offer the convenience of a conventional automatic gearbox. Automatic transmission until a few years ago was a luxury mostly offered with high end cars in India and there were very few models in the affordable cars space that would come equipped with one. With the new introduction, the redi-GO AMT joins the league Maruti Suzuki Alto K10, Renault Kwid AMT and the Tata GenX Nano AMT in the small hatchback segment with AMTs.
At the heart of the AMT transmission is a manual gearbox. It is a two pedal technology just like all other automatic transmissions, and uses actuators for clutch and gearshift operations. Actuators are either electro-mechanical or electrohydraulic type. The mechanism includes a clutch, but no clutch pedal. Clutch and shifts are operated by actuators, and all this is precisely controlled by the transmission control unit (TCU).
DATSUN’S PITCH
The Datsun redi-GO is based on the same CMF-A platform as the Renault Kwid and under the skin, both the cars remain the same. The initial perceptions were similar to the Kwid AMT, but the new redi-GO does exhibit minor differences from its sibling.
Datsun has named its AMT unit Smart Drive Auto, unlike the Kwid AMT which gets Renault’s Easy-R system, but the differences go beyond the nomenclature. The biggest difference is that the redi-GO gets a conventional shifter. So, there’s a lever instead of the rotary dial. Another key difference is the manual model, which will particularly come in handy when the driver wants to overtake someone, or is trying to go uphill. This feature isn’t available in the Kwid.
This story is from the February 2018 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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This story is from the February 2018 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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